


Your Mercy, Our Mercy

by ImpyTricky (rychuu)



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Apocalypse, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of Mercy Killing, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:54:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24748699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rychuu/pseuds/ImpyTricky
Summary: After showing him the Flashback light of the end of the world, Kokichi asks Gonta to help him Mercy Kill the rest of the class before they saw the truth. Instead of agreeing, Gonta decides to talk Kokichi out of it and comfort him.
Relationships: Gokuhara Gonta & Oma Kokichi
Comments: 2
Kudos: 113
Collections: Kokichi Ouma Month 2020





	Your Mercy, Our Mercy

**Author's Note:**

> MORE ANGST Because I can't get enough
> 
> This was written for day 15 of Ouma Month, with the prompt "Canon Divergent." 
> 
> Side note: Gonta talks like a normal person here, mostly out of personal preference. 
> 
> Either way, Enjoy!

The horrid memories that the light burned into his mind nearly made Gonta double over, wheezing and eyes widened from the surge of information. Information about what the state of the world was, beyond their hellish prison.

Nothing. A world full of _nothing,_ a dust planet with no signs of life. The outside world had been long dead, gone, nothing. There was nothing.

Gonta’s chest heaved with heavy sobs, his grief so heavy that he almost collapsed on the spot. His whole family, forest and human, gone forever. Nothing but little bits of dust and ash. Everyone’s family was gone, the world outside inhabitable for them, and yet they were engaging in a mutual slaughter that had no benefit.

Gonta never knew that despair could run so deep.

Looking for answers, looking for lies, Gonta’s eyes landed on Kokichi’s face. It was a hard expression, giving no hints of emotion or life. Blank, lifeless, and dead. 

Just like how he felt.

When Kokichi looked him over, Gonta saw that his hands balled into tiny little fists for the briefest of moments… and then it was gone, any hint of true emotion within his closest friend.

“... Now you know why I didn’t want anyone else to see yet,” Kokichi muttered quietly. His voice, which had been so oddly cold and lacking the usual life Gonta had come to adore so much, suddenly made a lot of sense. How long had Kokichi been holding back this information? Only a few days at most. The card key--that’s right. Kokichi changed the day after he stole it, which meant…

“Kokichi… I--What…” Gonta couldn’t speak, barely able to process it. “I do not… understand… How did you know? Did you see it? Did you…?”

It was too difficult to process, but Kokichi slowly nodded. “Yeah. The card key. I saw the secret of the outside world with it.”

“Is… is that why you have been acting so strange?” Gonta blubbered. He couldn’t even think of the horrid memories, unable to process anything else but the moment in which he existed. The present moment, each and every second that ticked by--pointless. It was all pointless.

“... That’s the world we’ve been _dying_ to get back to,” Kokichi continued, blunt and cold. Distant. His mind, his emotions, taken elsewhere. “Literally. That’s all there is outside.”

“Is.. is it the truth?” Gonta could barely breathe. “Is it true? Is it?”

“I wouldn’t lie about this,” Kokichi provided no comfort, nothing. Gonta doubted that even Kokichi could stretch himself so thin when he had been tasked to hold such a heavy burden. “... I saw it with my own eyes. No Flashback Lights. The air outside is toxic. I nearly passed out when I saw it.”

“So it… it is true…” Gonta drew in a wavering breath, which exhaled into a heavy sob. “My mother, and father… Auntie…?”

“We’re the only human beings left alive,” Kokichi confirmed, still cold, still emotionally absent. Gonta wondered how much Kokichi had already suffered from this truth alone beforehand. “And we’re just killing each other. There’s… nothing left to live for.”

“Nothing… left to live for…” Those words haunted him. Gonta’s face was damp with bitter tears, only further chilled by the snow. “Nothing…”

“That’s right. Nothing.” Kokichi’s voice was cold and dark. It was such a contrast, so absurdly different than Gonta was used to. Was he even speaking to Kokichi? “That’s true for everyone else, you know.”

“Everyone else…”

Gonta was shaking. Kokichi’s words further stirred in his chest, and a strong, disgusting desire took root in his heart. If anyone else discovered the truth, they would be far too devastated. Their lives were already meaningless.

Was it fair to go on with such heavy hearts? Could he be so cruel to their classmates, and tell them the truth of the world they so desperately fought to see once again? Gonta shuddered--it felt too cruel.

“... We should all just die here.”

Kokichi’s words made Gonta inhale sharply, as his vision and mind suddenly cleared. He turned to face Kokichi again, mouth agape. “Die… here?”

“Yeah. Die here,” Kokichi repeated. “All of us… before they all find out what’s really going on. That’d be a kinder fate, you know?” 

Kokichi crossed his arms behind his head, forcing out a smile.

“They all deserve to die like this, right? Without knowing the truth? Without knowing… what this feels like?” Kokichi’s smile turned into a wide, strained grin. “No matter what kind of people they are… they don't deserve this, don’t they?”

Gonta stared at Kokichi, realizing what exactly he was saying. That they should conspire against the rest of their classmates, for the greater good. For a kinder fate. To save them from a fate worse than death.

A part of Gonta couldn’t agree more with the sentiment.

Yet, something else stirred within him, a sense of guilt and concern. He soon realized why--because it wasn’t just him who felt so horrible that he wanted his life to end. The boy he saw before him, the closest friend Gonta ever had in his entire life, was silently suffering and falling apart. All this time, for everyone’s sake.

It felt too cruel to let him suffer.

“N… no,” Gonta whispered, forcing himself to speak through the grief and tears. Even if he wanted to die, even if he wanted the _others_ to die, even if this fate was worse than hell itself--

“... ‘No?’ What do you mean, no?” Kokichi let his arms fall to his sides, and he tilted his head. “But isn’t it far more cruel this way?”

“I… I do not know,” Gonta admitted. “But I… I cannot let you…”

“Ooooh? Let me hurt the others, you mean?” Kokichi’s grin returned, sadistic and strained. “So you _do_ think I’m a monster after all, don’t you!”

“N-no! That is not what I mean!” Gonta stood up straighter, and took a step forwards towards Kokichi. He took a step back, in fear--something he had never done before. It made Gonta wince, but he knew he had to persist. “You are…! You are hurting yourself like this! I know you do not want to hurt anyone, you always want to help the others as well! But… you always, at your own expense--”

“Haa? Wait, so you think I’m doing this for everyone’s sake?” Kokichi pouted, pretending to be ignorant. Pretending to be cruel. The role they wanted him to play--the role that hurt him so much.

“Y… yes! You cannot lie to me, Kokichi! I… I think… I understand you, better than you realize! I know you do not want to hurt anyone, deep in your heart--you don’t even want them to find out about the outside world, right? You have been keeping it a secret this whole time…”

Gonta’s voice trailed off, but Kokichi didn’t respond either. Instead, he hung his head and dropped his smile, the tiredness and despair he had been burying down finally showing themselves through his eyes. He looks so tired, so devoid of life that he might as well have had frozen to death right on the spot. Yet Kokichi started trembling, and tears glimmered in his eyes. “... You’re… you’re too _cruel,_ you know that? So… cruel…”

Kokichi’s shoulders started shaking, but it was clear that whatever resolve he had was crumbling. With his own pathetic whimpering, Gonta moved over to Kokichi, and hesitantly wrapped his arms around him.

He wanted to tell Kokichi that it would be all right. Yet as Kokichi started quietly sobbing into his shoulder, Gonta couldn’t find the words. He felt as if they weren’t enough, they weren’t appropriate. That it was cruel to pretend that, after what they had seen, everything would get better.

It wouldn’t get better. Gonta knew that--never, ever would anything get better. The friends that died in this hell they called a school, the hell that took away the lives they had foolishly been fighting for… there was no way that it would be all right.

But Gonta couldn’t let Kokichi damage himself anymore. His heart was the biggest of them all, and it had a tendency to bleed the most.

“I’m sorry,” Gonta whispered. He didn’t think Kokichi even heard him with how he cried. Gonta had never seen Kokichi act so vulnerable and open, but there was no way he could say it was a surprise. He had seen the end of the world. Of course he would be suffering.

“I’m here,” he whispered again. It was all he could promise, all that he could give. Nothing more, nothing less.

It was all he had left to give.


End file.
